– Microsoft RDS is now offered free of charge.
– Microsoft RDS is now available as a single edition — containing all of the functionality of the previous Standard Edition at no cost.
– New features in Microsoft RDS 2008 R3 include added support for Visual Studio 2010 and two additional simulation environments (Multi-level House and Factory).
– Additional samples have been made available on CodePlex, including Sumo and Soccer simulations. By making source code available on CodePlex, the community can modify and extend the Microsoft RDS platform.

Other new updates/changes include:

– The CCR & DSS Toolkit has been merged into RDS 2008 R3.
– CCR & DSS will remain a core component of RDS.
– CCR & DSS can be obtained by installing the full RDS package.
– R3 is no longer compatible with Compact Framework (CF) development.
– Samples for languages other than C# have been moved to CodePlex.